I agree to an extent with most of the criticisms but unlike OP and a lot of others who share them, I don’t hate the films at all just as I didn’t hate the Prequels either. The Sequel Trilogy has not ruined Star Wars just like Rebels, TCW, and the Prequels didn’t ruin it either. And let’s not forget the Holiday Special. Star Wars fans are too hyperbolic.

I do think they missed an opportunity at showcasing a new dynamic. Instead, the Republic is destroyed like that and the heroes are once again Rebels. I feel the same about how Lucas decided ti create a new planet, Naboo, instead of having it be Alderaan so that way when it’s destroyed in ANH, we’d have had more of a connection to that place. I thought about tweaking the Prequels to change all instances of Naboo into Alderaan but that’d be next to impossible. Without the technical wizardry of Adywan, I certainly wouldn’t be able to fix Sidious’ face in ROTS much less restructure the Prequels so significantly that Naboo becomes Alderaan. Hosnian Prime is perhaps a different story if it’s mentioned in the Opening Crawl and all instances of its name are simply cut, leaving us to assume it was Coruscant.

The Sequel Trilogy has seemingly pulled the worst elements of the old Legends post-ROTJ continuity into the new Canon without carrying over some of the better aspects. Both continuities now share the silly premise of “yet another superweapon!!” I wonder if Lucas hadn’t made a Death Star II, if we would have had the bajillion other superweapons in Star Wars history… But I digress. I would have much preferred the new dynamic of the New Republic battling a small faction known as the First Order that still believes in the ideals of the Empire. The old Legends continuity managed to find a way to tell stories that had this dynamic while still having stakes. At the end of the day, they both used the OT as a crutch. After ROTJ, they battle Imperial Remnants which basically amounts to the heroes of the OT battling against stormtroopers led by some new red lightsaber wielding villain. That’s the same as TFA and TLJ albeit with completely different framing. It does feel like their victory in ROTJ was for nothing. Technically, in canon, it’s been thirty some odd years but TFA is literally the first film after ROTJ, in the main saga, and so the fact that we go from “we did it!” to “welp, it was nice while it lasted” just like that is disappointing.

That said – Luke using the Force at the end of TLJ was fucking awesome. I couldn’t think of a better send off for him. The rest of his story in TLJ, to an extent, bugs me. I still can’t determine if it’s purely because I grew up with a Luke who won, who rebuilt the Jedi Order even with many several and varied trials and tribulations along the way, including falling to the Dark Side like his father before him, or if it really is a shame coming off the previous film, ROTJ, to see it all fall apart. If you look at it this way, they really have hit a reset button.

Han reverts back to being a smuggler which pretty much walks back all of the character’s growth and arc from the OT.
Luke hasn’t succeeded in rebuilding the Jedi Order so was it really that much of a “Return” of the Jedi?
The bad guys are still stormtroopers, still flying TIE Fighters, piloting AT-ATs and STs, using mini Death Star tech, and even building an even larger and deadlier Death Star
The good guys are still called Rebels

Snoke didn’t have to be anyone but they really haven’t gone anywhere in TLJ except backwards. Rey still hasn’t trained much with the Force, the Resistance is still on the run and is back to being a Rebellion, the First Order has basically reinstated the Empire apparently, etc. This is compounded by the fact that it also takes place immediately after TFA which doesn’t allow them to make any sort of jumps in where the characters are at. Even on a microlevel, Rey and Poe have only just met which is weird since everyone has mostly liked the new, younger cast thus far. For two of the big characters not to interact at all for two out of three of the films in the new trilogy is really weird. The OT had a marvelous group that had amazing chemistry. The Prequels didn’t have this because AOTC needed such a massive leap in time and thus swapped out the actor for Anakin out of necessity while one of the other major characters in TPM, Qui-Gon, is too dead to still be around physically. Add on some inferior dialogue and you’ve got a core group of characters that don’t have the best chemistry. But now the new trilogy HAS wittier banter (though some humor in TLJ didn’t feel Star Warsy to me) and characters who have a lot of chemistry and instead, they decide to splinter them up.

Finn interacts with Poe and Rey and BB-8. Poe interacts with Finn and BB-8. Rey interacts with Finn and BB-8. That’s it. That’s how it is in both films. They had an excuse in the first one; they didn’t realize Poe would be as popular as he was, they initially planned to kill him off anyway… but after seeing that chemistry at work, it’s mind boggling that they didn’t, at the very least, have him, Finn, BB-8, and the new character of Rose all go to Canto Bight. That would have been there Butt City. Instead, they decided to fracture the group more by not only having Rey on Ahch-To but also split Poe and Finn up again. So now, they have all of one film to finally stick together and that’s a shame.

TLDR I agree with the criticisms though that doesn’t make me hate the new films just like my criticisms of the Prequels didn’t make me hate them either. I love Luke’s display of Force Mastery at the end and I don’t mind what they did with Snoke. My issue lies more in the over arching story. It definitely should have been New Republic versus First Order. I’ve written new opening crawls for both TFA and TLJ that emphasize the role of the New Republic, acknowledging its presence as if it hasn’t been completely destroyed. From there, the only edits that need to be made are to the few instances where they imply “no one is coming”. No, fuck that, the New Republic absolutely would be coming but they just can’t get the signal far enough or something to that effect. That’s about the best you can hope for. The rest would basically be a fan film, not a fan edit.